


Photograph

by therealdocmountfitchett



Category: Call the Midwife
Genre: Backstory, Gen, I have no clue what to tag here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-18
Updated: 2016-02-18
Packaged: 2018-05-21 09:25:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6046471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/therealdocmountfitchett/pseuds/therealdocmountfitchett
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set at the beginning of S5. Delia and Patsy go back to Delia's old room at the nurse's home to clear out the last of Delia's possessions before her move to Nonnatus, and find an old school picture amongst the clutter. (One-shot)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Photograph

It was safe to say that the room had been turned upside down.  
The single bed in which Delia used to sleep in had been stripped of its covers, which were folded neatly inside a cardboard box next to the bed frame. The absence of coverings exposed the myriad chocolate, wine and other miscellaneous stains on the mattress she had been doing her best to hide from Matron for four years. All pictures and posters had been pulled down off the walls and packed up. The wardrobe doors stood open, and the inside was empty; Delia's clothes had been removed from it months ago, after the accident.  
Delia herself was downstairs, fresh from work and using the residence telephone to speak to Nurse Crane, who had (surprisingly but touchingly) offered them the use of her car whilst she moved. Patsy sat cross-legged on the floor of Delia's room, having been allocated the unglamorous job of sorting through the dresser. Items from its drawers surrounded her on all sides, spread out across the floorboards as Patsy attempted keeping track of what was what and what belonged where. She tossed aside a dog-eared copy of Woman's Own from two years ago, with the name of Delia's old roommate and a warning not to steal the magazine scrawled across the front, for the bin pile. Underneath it was a broken pair of cheap sunglasses (also thrown onto the bin pile), a rather lovely scarlet lipstick that looked as if it had been lost at some point (kept), and an unmarked envelope. It was rather an innocuous one; a slightly tatty brown envelope, A4, with the edge of a coffee ring on the top left hand corner.  
Patsy furrowed her brows with curiosity and picked it up. It felt as if there was something inside. The edge had been torn open a long time ago; gently, she shook the envelope, and its contents slid out. A large group photograph drifted to the floor. Patsy held it with cautious fingers and raised it up to the light.  
The photograph was of a herd of schoolchildren, trussed up in uniform and standing in tidy rows. A young-looking woman sitting in the front, whom she assumed to be a teacher, gripped a sign reading 'Bryn Gorllewin Grammar School. Form Three, 1950-1951'. For a moment, it seemed as if all the little photograph-grey faces in the picture were unfamiliar to Patsy, and she wondered why on earth Delia kept this in her dresser. Then it dawned on her; Bryn Gorllewin was Delia's old school, back in Wales. Some of the picture's hostile, stiff mystery vanished, as suddenly the faces weren't perfect strangers any longer. They were just kids from Pembrokeshire, who used to be classmates of Delia at the local grammar school.  
Patsy turned the photo over. Sure enough, the names of everyone pictured were written on the back in pencil. Busby, Delia was apparently seventh from left, third row. Patsy turned it over again and searched amongst the schoolchildren.  
She let out a chuckle. There was Delia; a baby-faced fourteen year old girl, shorter than the two girls beside her. Delia was grinning from ear to ear, looking unusually happy to be photographed. Her hair was shoulder length here; the shortest Patsy had ever seen it. Her trademark fringe hadn't made its debut yet either.  
As if on cue, current Delia slipped back inside the room.  
"What's that you've got there, Pats?" she asked brightly.  
Patsy held up the picture. "It's an old school photo of yours. Come and look at this!" 

 

1951  
Delia and Miss Dorrit had another row that afternoon.  
"You're not going to get anywhere, Miss Busby, if you don't make some immediate changes to your attitude".  
Miss Dorrit had a peculiar way of speaking. It was sing-song and dangerously close to twee, as if she were addressing a child. She rarely shouted; Miss Dorrit patronised you instead.  
"You're a cheeky girl, and you answer back. You walk about this school as if you own the place; you think you're quite funny, don't you, Miss Busby?"  
Delia longed to give a flippant reply. It made her burn how wrong Miss Dorrit had her figured out, and on a deeper level, it hurt too. But, she held her tongue and rebelled by doing exactly what she wasn't expected to do; keep quiet. She kept quiet, holding her teacher's eye contact unfaltering.  
"Well, it's my job to tell you that you aren't. You understand me? You aren't funny, you aren't clever, you aren't witty. You're an irritating fourteen year old girl who thinks herself a comedian, but this is school. You're here to work, not act the fool".  
"I wasn't acting the fool, miss. It was an accident", Delia snapped. Sally Dorrit arched an eyebrow, and the former wanted to melt away into the floor.  
"Oh, it was an accident? Well, I suppose knowing that it was all a big misunderstanding and nothing to do with Miss Busby not paying attention will pay for a replacement book for Miss Lockhart".  
That's what she was in Miss Dorrit's office for this time; knocking over a Bunsen burner with her elbow and setting fire to an exercise book in Chemistry. It was only a small fire that she stamped out in seconds, but Seb Pritchard (her work partner) was quick to deflect any sort of blame from himself, ensuring that it was only a protesting Delia who got sent to the head of Third Form's office.  
"I'm sorry, and I've apologised to Miss Lockhart too. But it wasn't on purpose", she said through gritted teeth.  
Miss Dorrit fixed her with a pointed, piercing stare across the desk. Delia Busby and Sally Dorrit disliked each other; Delia didn't like Miss Dorrit's strict insistence upon 'her rules', or the way she talked to her pupils as if they were infant schoolers, or the way she seemed to exist in a perpetual state of sourness. Miss Dorrit didn't like Delia's talkativeness, or independence; how the girl didn't appear to see the importance of doing what Sally told her to do detail-for-detail, or even seemed to be intimidated by her at all. The two of them hit it off on the wrong foot two years ago when Miss Dorrit gave Delia detention in her first week at grammar school for forgetting to get a homework slip signed by a parent, and the latter sneaked off to the toilets and cried. They had clashed with each other ever since, grating like two rusty hinges. Miss Dorrit wasn't the most affectionate of teachers anyway, but Delia Busby was one happy-go-lucky little chatterbox whom she never managed to defrost to. At all.  
There was a silence between them. Sally reached into her desk drawer and pulled out a packet of cigarettes, lighting one with a match. The smell of stale cigarette smoke burned in the air, mingling in with the usual school musk of chalk and disinfectant. She exhaled a cloud of smoke from between her lips and smiled sweetly all of a sudden.  
"What are you planning on doing after you leave school, Miss Busby?"  
Delia furrowed her brows. Some instinct told her not to answer, but she did so anyway. "I want to be a nurse", came her even, cold reply.  
"I've known many girls like you over the years. And do you know what? Girls like you... well, they don't get anywhere in life", said Miss Dorrit, with an air of vague superiority. "How do you expect to become a nurse if you can't even sit in Mrs Lockhart's class for five minutes without causing a fire?"  
The last three words were emphasised with disgust.  
"It's never happened before, miss. I told you, it was an accident, and accidents happen", the rather small fourteen year old girl muttered.  
"Stop answering me back, girl". Sally's voice took on a harsh edge, before softening again astonishingly quickly. "You won't get anywhere, Miss Busby. That's the plain and simple truth of the situation. You're clumsy and you're scatterbrained, you talk far too much not to get on everybody's last nerve, and you don't know how to follow rules. Do you think people like you ever get jobs or husbands?" She paused to take another long drag on her cigarette (Delia bit her lip to stop herself from coughing). "They don't. And besides, look at you. You can't even be bothered to come to school looking presentable. If you want to make a good impression, don't look like a cheap farm scruff. People like you just don't make good nurses".  
Delia held onto her mask of icy indifference, but Miss Dorrit's last few words hit their target magnificently. The former glanced down at her clothes; most of her uniform had belonged to her sister or cousin before her. School uniforms were expensive, and the Busbies were far from rich. She didn't look bad at all, though Delia could pick out every fray, stain or patch on each of her garments, and spent too much time trying to cover them up. Mam might have been a proud woman, but no amount of washing or sewing could fix some damage.  
Miss Dorrit was still staring at her searchingly, and there was triumph in the woman's pale eyes. Delia was unsure of whether she wanted to storm out in fury, or cry. There were angry tears welling close to the surface, which she swallowed back.  
Sally looked at her watch. "It's five past eleven. Your break started five minutes ago, and you have school photographs today". Begrudgingly, she said "You're dismissed. I hope I've made myself clear; I won't have any more funny business from you, because I'm sick and tired of seeing your face near my office".  
Delia stood up, slinging her bag over her shoulder.  
"Yes, miss" she muttered. It was a relief to open the door and get out into the corridor. 

While she walked, she kept her eyes passionately to the ground. Miss Dorrit's words had hooked themselves to the inside of her mind. Pronounced judgement was eating her alive from the inside out. The pain came partly from knowing that someone thought of her so badly, and wondering what she had ever done to be so thoroughly disliked. It also came from thinking about it, and thinking about it some more, and denying it to herself, and the thought niggling in that perhaps it pained her so much because deep down she knew that Miss Dorrit was right. Delia Busby was a poor, cheap scruff, and destined to be a disappointment.  
She had no time to think about it more, because Form Three were being photographed in the schoolyard and she was scheduled to be there. Kids in uniform milled about in the grounds, but Delia weaved through them in search of her classmates. Form Three were being herded into rows in front of the hall, and Mr Jenkins was taking the register.  
"Does anybody know where Delia Busby is?" he called, trying in vain to be audible over the sound of teenagers.  
"I'm here, sir!"  
Mr Jenkins smiled. "Just on time. You're the last person on my list".  
Delia slipped into the second row, squeezing into the space Rhodri Evans and Jen Thomas had made for her.  
"How did it go?" murmured Jen, smirking. "Did porridge-face give you a proper row?"  
She smacked her friend gently on the arm, giving an off-handed grin and transforming into the laid-back Delia who didn't care when teachers gave her unfair rows.  
"It wasn't too bad. She just told me that I needed to get my act together, that sort of thing".  
"Look ahead, please!" the photographer shouted. He directed them until the wayward group were standing in some semblance of neatness, looking towards the camera and being still.  
It was a summer's day in 1951. School photograph day in the schoolyard of Bryn Gorllewin Grammar School, that great old building tiled with green and white tiles in seemingly ever corridor. With thoughts of failure etched into her brain, Delia Busby smiled at the camera, and in the flash of a bulb the moment was captured. 

 

Ten years later, she held that preserved moment in her hands. It had been flattened to a black and white photograph of schoolchildren in uniform, smiling with the sun on their faces.  
"Where are you again?" smiled Patsy, chuckling under her breath. Delia pointed herself out, frozen in time as a baby-faced fourteen year old standing between Rhodri and Jen.  
"Bless your cotton socks, Deels. You look so young!"  
Delia laughed and pulled the photo away. "It's a terrible picture, Pats. I look like a squirrel".  
Now, Patsy laughed. "Don't be silly, you looked sweet".  
Rolling her eyes, Delia sat down heavily. Her sensible work shoes were giving her blisters, so she kicked them off. The purple uniform she wore was squeaky clean, as per Matron's rules, and starched stiff.  
Her old school was three hundred miles and eight years in the past away; London was now.  
"What was it like back at work? Had everyone missed you terribly?" Patsy asked.  
"A couple of them were just shocked to see me walking and talking, I think", she laughed. "But, it was good, actually. Brilliant to be back in the saddle again, though not much time for catching up with people. As soon as I clocked on, there was a man with a septic fishhook stuck in his shoulder for me to disinfect".  
Now, Patsy threw back her head and laughed. "Never a dull moment on the male surgical ward, is there?"  
Delia rolled her eyes, reaching for one of the biscuits on the plate under the desk. "Never a dull moment indeed".


End file.
